Fighting the cold
'It was freezing! The aircraft used to ice up. We had leaflets to drop and if you cut the pack and touched the knife to your skin it would stick.
Greg Gregson
During World War Two, while the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command defended the United Kingdom against German aerial attacks, RAF Bomber Command’s role was to take the war to the enemy - by bombing their airbases, shipping, troops, communications and all industries used in the Nazi war effort. A strategy which was pivotal in our victory, as leading German generals testified afterwards.
After the British Army’s retreat across the Channel from Dunkirk in 1940, until D-day in 1944, Britain and her allies had no way of hitting back at the Germans other than by long-range bombing.
The vital task of bombing Germany fell to RAF aircrews - aircrews with an average age of just 22.
The reasons for bombing Germany were to disrupt industrial production of weapons, to wear down the German people’s morale and to force the German Army and Air Force (the Luftwaffe) into having to defend against the bombing over a wide area. Repeated attacks on the German homeland also caused the diversion of industrial war production to defensive, rather than offensive weapons and equipment. Forcing the Germans onto the defensive was a critical factor in the liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
However the aircrews of Bomber Command also carried out many other types of mission. The Blenheim bomber crews flew extremely dangerous low-level daylight raids against shipping targets early in the war and suffered very high casualties. The British bombers also laid thousands of mines at sea that sank hundreds of enemy ships throughout the war.
Bomber Command’s precision raids included bombing Hitler’s V-rocket weapon development centre and launch sites, the famous ‘Dambusters’ raid and the sinking of the ‘Tirpitz’ battleship. RAF bombers supported the Allied armies before and after the D-day landings, and flew many spectacular precision low-level daylight raids across Europe, hitting factories, rail and communications targets and even the Berlin radio station as Goering, the Head of the Luftwaffe, began to broadcast a speech in honour of the Nazi Party. It had been Goering who had declared at the beginning of the war “No enemy aircraft will fly over the Reich territory.” Bomber Command also played a vital role in saving the lives of civilians – famously dropping food to the starving Dutch with Operation Manna.
